I always had such a horror that something might happen to one of my children. One of them was missing for 15 minutes when she was 3. We had just moved into a new house and the furniture was not in place. We had a big English sofa that still was facing the wall. She was dead tired so she wrapped herself in her security blanket, crawled up on the couch and went to sleep. But I didn`t see her. I was absolutely panic-stricken because we had just moved near a lake. I hadn`t been sure that I wanted to move near a lake, because I worried about kids around water. I was saying, `Somebody go to the lake. Get to the lake!`
That became an important part of ”Where are the Children?” The mother runs to the lake the minute her children are missing. The other part of that book was a case in New York in which a woman was on trial for the murder of her two children. The woman had the face of an angel-she was absolutely beautiful-and everybody would talk: `What do you think? Did she do it?`
She was found guilty of manslaughter in the death of her little girl and the conviction was overturned. Then she was found guilty of murder in the death of her little boy and the conviction was overturned. She was in and out of jail for 10 years.
Because it was an area of so much discussion, I thought: `Suppose . . .` You see, the magic word in suspense writing is `suppose.` You take something that is a true case and say `suppose` and then run with it. I always try to choose a case or a situation that everybody has a heated opinion on, because right away you have the stuff of drama, which is conflict.
The other thing that had always fascinated me was the Lindbergh case. We had a summer home in Silver Beach which is on Long Island Sound at the very tip of the Bronx. It looks like a little New England hamlet. Back in those days, it was very rustic.
We would pass St. Raymond`s cemetery where a ransom note was left. We would never pass by there without my father saying, `There, my dear, is where the note for that dear little baby was left.` So I had heard about the Lindbergh baby from the time I was a tiny little kid.
I remember the night (Bruno) Hauptmann was executed. My brothers and I were playing marbles, and we had an Oriental rug with a design in the middle that was home plate. My mother and father had the radio on, and of course Little Big Ears was listening.
I remember the radio switched from the penitentiary, the last mile routine, to the motel where Mrs. Hauptmann was screaming and beating her head against the wall and hysterically running back and forth. It just stuck in my mind-the Golden Child of the Golden Couple.
When I was doing radio shows myself many years later, we did one show where we talked to a lot of authors. And every few years, a publicist would phone and say she had yet another person who claimed to be the Lindbergh baby. So it was just that it never died. That`s why all of those ingredients went into ”Where are the Children?”
But it was really the fear of losing children and, perhaps, the love of children that made me write about that primal fear. I write about what I worry about instead of what I want to have happen, God knows.
I had always wanted to be a writer. I kept a journal, from the time I was very small. In math class, I would write stories instead of doing my assignments. When I got married, I said to myself: `I just have to learn how to write. I`ve got to become a professional.` As soon as I was married, I signed up at New York University for a writing course at night. That`s where I wrote my first short story, and it sold-six years later.
I didn`t become a full-time writer until my husband died. We had known for five years that his heart was terrible. The doctor said `every day is a bonus.` His arteries were the arteries of an 80-year-old man. He smoked heavily-we didn`t know in those days-and everybody`s idea of a good meal was a nice thick steak. So we did everything wrong, thinking we were eating well.
I had just been asked to do a syndicated radio show, $20 a script, five scripts a week. I had substituted for a friend of mine who was doing the show, and the company had been after me to take a show. But I didn`t want to do it. I was writing short stories, and I didn`t want to take a job like that, with five little kids and a husband.
When I realized how ill my husband was, I called up my friend and said,
`Warren will not go back to work again. He`s so sick. I`d like to take a show.` Well, he had 10 hours of life left at that point, although I obviously didn`t know that.
The night of the funeral I just sat there. I was 36 years old, and I thought: `This is the rest of my life.` I certainly knew I wasn`t going to go husband-hunting with five little kids. I knew that was absolutely out of the question. So I thought, `I will give the creative energy that I gave to marriage to my writing.`
The next week, I went in and took the material and started writing the shows. I wrote at home for one year, which was good for the kids. Then the company said they really needed somebody who could come into the office, who could go out on interviews. So I decided to do it.
Bless my mother`s heart-she never lived with me, but she was around for the next five years. She spent about 80 percent of her time with me, so she was home for the kids when they got home from school which was wonderful. That was the way it worked.
The radio shows were wonderful experience, because in four minutes you have to tell a story. I did so many different kinds. I did a show called
”Portrait of a Patriot”-every day a different patriot. I did a gift show about a gift that changed a lifetime-the most important, the most poignant, the most amusing. After three years of that, I was looking in the obituary column-if anybody sent flowers, they were on the show. I did a show called
”Women Today.” We had the first woman rabbi on, the first woman stockbroker, the first woman elected governor. I did a show on travel, a show on driving-can you imagine writing about cars every day? There was nothing I didn`t know about rumble seats.
It was fun to do them, but the only problem was that after the shows were finished and aired, they were over. I could look at the magazines where I `d published short stories, and there they were. I thought, `I`ve got to get back to the printed word.` And there was absolutely no market for short stories at that time. The magazines had switched to 14 how-to articles and one short story, as opposed to seven short stories, a novella and a continuing series.
So I thought, `I`ll try a book.` That first book was about George Washington, because I had done three radio shows on him. I called my agent and said, `Pat, I`ve decided to do a book,` because I hadn`t given her anything in a couple of years. She said, `Well, thank God! What`s it about?` And I said
`George Washington!`
There was dead silence. Then she said, `Why?` I gushed with how wonderful he was, and the wonderful relationship between him and Martha, and how he had a sense of humor, and he was 6-foot-5, and he was the best dancer in the colony of Virginia, and he rode his horse like an Indian and on and on.
She just cut me off and said, `Listen, Mary. With those wooden teeth, the only thing he ever gave Martha was splinters. I`m not sending that book out. You`d be wasting your time. I`m not going to be part of it.`
Well, I decided to do it anyway, because I was just so filled with him and I had so many notes on him. A friend in my writers` workshop told her editor about it, and her editor called me in and bought the book, for $1,500 advance. I worked on it for three years. So I made $500 a year, but at least it was published. I always say it was promoted with a whispering campaign. It was remaindered as it came off of the press. I stupidly called it ”Aspire to the Heavens,” his mother`s family motto, but the few bookstores it slithered into put it next to ”Thoughts for the Day” and the Bible in the religious section.
The book went nowhere, but at least it proved I could write a book. Then I said, `OK, now I want to write about something that will sell. I want to make some money.`
I realized I had cut my teeth on mysteries. I loved to read mystery, so I thought, `I`ll give it a crack.` I had started going up to Cape Cod and I loved it. It has an aura, a mystery. And I figured that was a great location for a book, because thanks to the Kennedys, everybody feels they know Cape Cod. It`s also a place where someone who wants privacy, who has been desperately hurt, will run. The Capies don`t bother you. If you want to be private, they`re not going to force themselves on you. Then that`s where all the other stuff came into play, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the golden child.
